The Jon Jones-Rashad Evans situation is heating up as we get closer to Jones’ fight with Mauricio “Shogun” Rua at UFC 128 Saturday night in New Jersey.

If you haven’t been following along at home, here’s the score:

• Jones hungrily accepted the UFC’s offer to fill in for Evans against Rua when his Team Jackson teammate injured his knee and had to postpone fighting for the title.

• Evans took umbrage with Jones hopping the line since he waited on the sidelines for over a year to get a crack at Rua while the UFC light heavyweight champ recovered from knee surgery, but he took the high road and decided to bite his tongue on the matter.

• Jones reneged on an earlier pact to never fight Evans and goes on record saying during an interview with Versus that he would have no problem facing “Suga.”

• When put on the spot about Jones quote about fighting him during MMA Live, Evans basically said “he ain’t no bitch” and that if that’s what “Bones” said, he would have to fight him.

• Jones tells reporters during a media conference call for UFC 128, “I absolutely hate when people mention Rashad Evans, especially throughout this training camp….for people to even be mentioning Rashad Evans right now…I think it’s ludicrous. Rashad is not in my mind, he’s not in my being, he has absolutely zero to do with my heart and who I am right now. This guy has nothing to do with Shogun and from here on out, I don’t think I’ll answer a question about Rashad. I have a lot of people outside of Rashad who I can draw energy and power from and they’ll all be with me.”

Which brings us to this week.

In an effort to inject himself into the drama to keep his name on the lips of MMA fans while he waits for the UFC to put him back in the rotation, Chael Sonnen tweeted the following today:

MMA’s King of All Media was referring to an interview Evans did with ProMMARadio’s Larry Pepe last night in which the former UFC light heavyweight champ addressed the escalating Jones situation and hinted that if Jones wins Saturday night he may do what Diego Sanchez did when Jackson brought on GSP and leave the gym to train elsewhere, at least for their probable clash and perhaps even permanently.

“When he joined the team, he joined the team on the premise that he wouldn’t fight none of us because that’s…with Greg Jackson, that’s one of his policies. Greg brought him on the team and he said he was like, you know what? Jon’s on this team, he’ll be a good addition to the team. He’s got a good style and he’s an up and coming kid and he’ll never fight you or never challenge you or nothing like that. There’s nothing you need to worry about. He brought him onto the team with that intro.”

About whether or not he will continue to train at Jackson’s MMA if Jones wins the belt and if he has decided whether or not he will fight his flip-flopping teammate:

“It’s something I gotta talk to Greg [Jackson] about it and I gotta talk to Jon [Jones] about. That’s how I believe things should be done. We entered into an agreement together and if things are gonna go another way, I don’t think he should have to find out from TV. He should find out from my mouth before I tell anybody. That’s just how I do it as a man.I just have to sit down and decide on whats its going to be, because whatever it is going to be, there is no going back. There is no making it better. There is no going back to the team after it is done. If we agree to fight, if we say we are going to fight, it’s over. If theres a chance I am going to fight someone, then I want to be able to keep an advantage somehow. If we are both drinking from the same well — learning the same knowledge with the same camp, with the same partners — then how am I going to surprise them? He knows what I know. I would need to divorce myself from the situation and just start over, and come with something new. I would divorce myself from the crew from Jackson’s. Trevor [Whittman] would be separate because he is at Grudge. Jon trains in Albuquerque, so I just would divorce myself from Albuquerque and from training with Greg.”

About Jones’ comments during the conference call:

“That does sound a little bit cold-blooded. Jon’s a young guy and when you’re a young guy sometimes you talk a little too fast for your brain to keep up. I don’t think it’s acceptable at all. I don’t think it’s something I’d say. It sounds like he wants to fight, huh? Those sound like fighting words. Ya know, I don’t know how to judge the kid. It’s kinda messed up, to be honest. Ya know, I can’t control what anyone else says and it sounds to me like he’s a little bit insecure about the whole thing. Sometimes when you open your mouth you show what you’re afraid of more than anything. I don’t know why he has such an adverse response like that to me. I’ve never challenged him or made him feel like he should do that sort of thing. It sounds to me — if I was out of the situation — that he was feeling insecure about me. You can’t just expect to not talk about a situation where you stepped in for a friend and training partner in a title fight who was injured. You can’t take it personal… That sounds like a baby.”

Fuelling speculation that Evans has already left Jackson is the fact that he has spent increasingly more time training in Colorado at Grudge Training Center with Trevor Whittman. Rashad, however says that he isn’t even sure if he will move his camps to Denver if he leaves Team Jackson.

“Trevor’s my guy. I did my last two camps with Trevor and I spent a lot of time with Trevor lately. He comes from the school of boxing where they don’t have no problems with training partners because in boxing they bring sparring partners in, they pay ‘em and they don’t have a relationship as intimate as you see with MMA fighters. We pretty much trust each other to show up as a favor because we ain’t got no big purses to pay nobody to come and put ‘em up in hotels and stuff,” Evans told Pepe. “It’s two schools of thought they’re coming from. Greg’s the guy with the MMA gym in Albuquerque and everybody goes to his school. Before you know it you have two, three guys in the same weight class. The problem comes and eventually something’s gonna happen. The reality that has maybe become more of a reality is that I won’t use Greg at all. I’ve been playin’ around with the idea of where I’m gonna go and what I’m gonna do if the situation comes to a head, but the situation is bigger than just me and Jon; it’s the team. What’s gonna happen now is that the 155′ers are like, you know what? Now we have to separate. Now we gotta go, because you have Melvin Guillard, you have Clay Guida and you have Joe Stevenson all in the same weight class. If we all have to fight, then we all gotta get away from each other.”

Evans recently spent some time in Florida training with displaced ATT fighters Gesias “JZ” Cavalcante and the Villefort brothers at Imperial Athletics — an option for the future if he, Jones and Jackson can’t work out their differences.

Evans’ manager, Glenn Robinson of Authentic Sports Management tried to diffuse the volatile situation today by explaining to MMAFighting’s Ariel Helwani that Rashad’s comments were simply in regards to where his client will train if he has to fight “his friend,”Jones.

“[Evans] hasn’t decided what he is going to do with training,” Robinson said.”If they decided to fight, obviously they both can’t train at the same place.

UFC president Dana White told Helwani over the weekend that Rashad would be a fool to let the opportunity to fight for the title slip away considering he hasn’t been friends with Jones very long. White blames the bros before foes” rule on Jackson.

“It makes sense [that they fight each other if Jones wins the title]. There’s been a lot of stuff [said by] Rashad. Rashad thinks that I’m hatin’ him or whatever the deal is. I don’t. The reality is — I said it on your show the last time I talked to you — he hasn’t known Jon Jones that long. To call him a brother and this and that…I really believe that…and Rashad didn’t tell me this. Jon Jones didn’t tell me this. This is just something that I came up with in my head. This has to be coming from the camp. Which, if you look at it from, whether it’s um….uh….uh…whether it’s Greg Jackson’s idea or the other guys that are up in Colorado, whoever the coaches are up there,” White explained. “Whatever is goin’ on, why would they want these guys to fight each other? Because if they do, one guy is going to leave the camp and they make less money on that deal. If a Jon Jones and a Rashad Evans and this guy and that guy leaves, that’s not good for business. That’s bad for business. The reality is, this isn’t a team sport, man. You look throughout the history of boxing, guys used to have to spar with each other all the time and the guys who came in as sparring partners eventually became world champions some day. You have to train with other people. You have to train with the best. It’s a fact. You just don’t become such “close friends” that you don’t want to fight each other. It’s bullshit.”

Another thing White says Rashad should be mindful of is the fact that the window for the 31-year-old to be champion is narrowing.

“If I was Rashad, I would say whoever wins this fight I wanna fight. The guy got injured; he was next in line for the fight. I’d wanna fight him too. But now he’s gotta sit around, he’s gotta wait and see what happens with these two, he’s gotta wait to see who wins — do they come out 100 percent or are they injured and have to wait a little while or do they want to fight again? He’s put himself into a bad position and that’s what I was saying about him: He’s boxed himself into this corner,” the UFC president told Helwani. “There’s a very small window of opportunity when you’re a fighter, okay? You have a small window of opportunity to get out there, fight as much as you can and accomplish as many great things as you can and sittin’ around waitin’ for other people who are your friends, you know? Really, what matters at the end of the day is, Rashad Evans, Jon Jones, Shogun Rua — no matter who it is, they’re out there fighting for their families. It’s no different than any other job. You show up here and chase me all around the world [to interview me] so you can make money and so you and your wife can have kids and buy a home and that’s really what it’s all about. Even in the fight business, it’s a job just like any other job and you have a small window of opportunity. You can be chasin’ me around the world for the next 30 years, okay? Rashad Evans can’t fight Jones and Shogun and all of these guys for the next 30 years. You got a few years to get this done, and accomplish great things, and make a bunch of money.”

it was bound to happen, and not just with GJ's camp. MMA is still smoewhat new to the masses. DW and Zuffa have done a great job getting it to where it is now. By only having 5 weight classes at first, it made it easy to pick someone to root for and grasp who the major players were and just understand mma a little more which was needed for a new sport. well now they added bantam and feather to UFC which now gives it 7 weight classes. think about how many gym and camps there are to how many belts are available. the reputable camps far outweigh the number of belts available. I grew up watching boxing, which is now dead IMO, but there are a shitload of more weight classes, and plus it's a different mind set i think than MA. Boxers seemed to just want to KO throw down. There's a lot of ego in boxing is what i am getting at and yeah, maybe you trained with this dude or sparred with him a few times, but when money's on the line you fight. that's your fucking job. your job isn't to make friends in the gym. i like the loyalty and respect that MAers have for one another, most of the time, but seriously Anderson(whom i'm a huge fan of), you don't want anyone in your camp, or Brazil for that matter, to come after you for a shot at the your title? loyalty and respect don't put asses in the seats. I think DW wants nothing more than good ass fights because that's what the fans want, and all these camps saying i won't fight this guy cuz i train with him or what not is pretty lame. suck it up and fight, that's what you get paid for. it's probably what helped lead to the necessity to purchase Strikeforce. Shits getting old fighting most of the same peeps, but NOT THIS GUY.

I'm all for the UFC sending some bad asses across/down the ranks to SF to mix that shit up. everyone is gonna be UFC anyways in the next few years.

portland mma- March 15, 2011 at 4:16 pm

Completely agree with you Let It Rain with the rate that Jackson is expanding you gotta expect a whole lot more of this stuff too. I guess I'm in the minority on this one though, both as a Rashad fan and a person who sees why he is pissed. I totally understand why training partners wouldn't want to fight each other...especially in a situation like Rashad where he sees Jones as a young up-and-comer (albeit he's up and coming faster then most, yeah that sounded good) he can kind of take under his wing.

On the whole Jones vs Rua thing I think too many people are counting out Rua, I think Jones is going to take it but Shogun's got the experience to perhaps win it.

MMAINMYBLOOD- March 15, 2011 at 3:09 pm

Shogun will not beat jbj you can take that to the bank.

LET IT RAIN- March 15, 2011 at 2:36 pm

I think success just bit GJ in the ass.

hooligun- March 15, 2011 at 1:49 pm

evans = hopeless and irrelevant.

shogun vs bones = omfg rukiddingme!

if evans gets the next title shot he loses for sure.

after that, if jones is champ he should get machida but if shogun has it who the fuck faces him?

good times!

RwilsonR- March 15, 2011 at 1:41 pm

Danomite's analysis is exactly the way I took Jones' comments. Rashad is just trying to make Jones the enemy since Jones has the title shot now, and Rashad is upset about that.

Get Off Me- March 15, 2011 at 1:25 pm

Danomite's right on with the disrespect thing, Jones was not disrespectful, quite the contrary, he wants to talk about his title match and Shogun only leading into their fight, nothing wrong with that.

I never liked Jackson, but I respect him. In the end his gym is his gym, who he trains and for how long is up to him. I do think that there are other qualified trainers for Rashad and so I really do not feel sorry for anybody in this instance.

I think Shogun will beat Jones, but I do believe Jones is championship material. Shogun is going after Jones's lead leg and I have had a feeling that Jones may do the good old Corey Hill one of these days, it may be in this up coming fight.

intercept440- March 15, 2011 at 1:23 pm

since the UFC pretty much has a monopoly on the MMA world right now , Dana should just draft up a unified rules provision in the ranking system (what little system they seem to have), and just flat out state the obvious if your champ, your fighting number one contender, if your number one contender your fighting the champ, number 2 vs number 3 for the new number 2 etc.
Regardless if there friends, bonner and griffin didnt have no problem fighting each other and their friends..
outside you can be friends ..inside the cage your competitors

# Face it Rashad is Butthurt, AND SCARED of his homie Jones

Spicymeatball- March 15, 2011 at 1:16 pm

Jon Jones is a beast, but he's kind of a douche-bag. He infuses the word God and Jesus in every sentence, and he's starting to lose his humility if he ever had it. That said he would destroy Rashad, but I'd love to see it happen.

rogerw- March 15, 2011 at 12:46 pm

I have to say, the longer this pre-fight stuff goes on, the less I'm rooting for Jones against Shogun, he's really kind of starting to piss me off.

cecils_pupils- March 15, 2011 at 12:40 pm

Also, in the bigger picture, look what all this talk about Rashad fighting Jones is really saying about the Jones vs. Shogun fight this weekend - everyone is acting like Jones has already won... and anything can happen in MMA.

That said, Jones will defeat Shogun by Round 3, then Rashad's gonna have to pack his locker and hit the road. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

omunto- March 15, 2011 at 12:32 pm

TLDR

cecils_pupils- March 15, 2011 at 12:30 pm

Rashad is butt hurt, that's all.

That Guy- March 15, 2011 at 12:16 pm

@LOKI yeah pretty much. GJ goes with the guys who he thinks have the brighter future. You'd think guys like Diego, who came up with Jackson and was his first big name fighter in the UFC, or Rashad, who has been there for years, would get first dibs. But I guess that's how GJ rolls when dealing with potential title holders

@VERA loyalty is generally considered a big part of the MA in MMA

RwilsonR- March 15, 2011 at 11:56 am

"...because we ain’t got no big purses to pay nobody to come and put ‘em up in hotels and stuff."
Obviously Rashad went to Michigan State for wrestling, and didn't really spend a lot of energy putting the scholar in scholarship.

You show up here and chase me all around the world [to interview me] so you can make money and so you and your wife can have kids

You'd have to be desperate if you're following Dana White around so you can have kids.

Shifty-Eyed Dog- March 15, 2011 at 11:45 am

I hope Jones gets his ass kicked. As much as he tries to seem humble (or at least used to), he's a cocky little bastard and needs to get knocked down a notch.

El Guapo- March 15, 2011 at 11:24 am

^Except for the last line. The last time we saw Shogun coming off an injury he looked like hot garbage vs Forrest, and we all know how THAT turned out.

rogerw- March 15, 2011 at 11:21 am

Big fucking deal. Who says you have to stay in the same camp forever as a MMA fighter anyway? Yeah, it kind of sucks for Rashad, but sometimes you just gotta move on.

El Guapo- March 15, 2011 at 11:21 am

Danomite... FTW!!

Vera- March 15, 2011 at 11:15 am

@LOKI so are you saying GJ should stop running his business like a businessman and should start making his business decisions based on loyalty and friendship?

LOKI- March 15, 2011 at 11:05 am

It seems GJ is the one who isnt very loyal. He is trading Rashad in for a younger prettier more marketable girl in Jones the same way he did to Diego with Georges's.

LET IT RAIN- March 15, 2011 at 10:59 am

DW's right. It's every man for himself and it seems like Greg Jackson got in to his teams' heads and doesn't want them to fight. Jackson will lose business and the rep of having all these dope fighters under his gym if they start fighting each other as they begin to leave to train else where. I wonder who spills the beans first regarding Jackson's camp and the use of vaseline. It seems to be an issue more often than not.

LOKI- March 15, 2011 at 10:55 am

Damnit! He was the only guy at that camp I actually liked until Diego came back. Why couldnt they both leave so I can hate the camp en-totem?
Hope Shogun fux Martian Manhunter up with a head kick and Hashad is there to give the old school Chute Boxe "Heeaaaaaaaaaay!"

danomite- March 15, 2011 at 10:54 am

I don't see what Evans' problem with anything Jones has said or done, unless of course he's upset because he knows he can't beat him. First off, Jones didn't ask for a title shot, it was given to him so he would have been stupid to turn it down. Rashad was injured it's not like he was healthy and the UFC wanted Jones to cut in front of him. Secondly, I thought Jones saying he would fight Rashad if Rashad wanted was the honorable thing to do. Think about it, we're assuming that Jones is the champion in this scenario. The dick move would have been to say "No, Rashad can't get a title shot even if the UFC gives it to him." Instead he said "if Rashad wants a shot at the belt I'll give it to him." Third, the guy has a fucking title shot coming up and all anybody is asking him is about a fucking hypothetical fight with someone else. All he said, in a somewhat frustrated manner, is that he's only thinking about his next fight. This is the same thing GSP says everytime someone asks him about Anderson Silva. So why the hell does all this have everyone's panties in a bunch?